There is a lot of emphasis on going green these days, with rising gas prices, and carbon based energy systems being pushed to capacity it’s time to help make a change. Installing daylight balanced compact fluorescent bulbs (or CFLs) will help offset some of that waste. Just one bulb uses only a 1/3 of the energy of standard tungsten bulbs and will help keep half a ton of CO2 out of the atmosphere and will save you around $30 over the life of the bulb.
It doesn’t just stop there, we are also big fans of pdfs and emails over printed items. Not only is printing costly but also wasteful. Most people in business have access to personal computers-laptops, it’s just as easy to send clients pdfs of files then it is to give them hard copies to walk away with and eventually throw away. Saving paper, money, printing, and delivery expenses. Of course that doesn’t work for all invoicing but every little bit helps.
As far as transportation goes, It’s amazing though even the hybrids and most efficient cars still produce harmful emissions in their production. Over half of a cars negative impact on the environment happens in it’s production the rest is through use over the life of the car. Hybrids and electrics are better than most but there still isn’t a clean way to make a car. One fun fact is that most of the first cars ever made were electric. Although they didn’t go very far they were useful enough for most trips people needed to make.
There are other little things that can be done as well to help save power, money and carbon impact. By simply turning off computers at the end of the night instead of leaving them in sleep mode or idle will help. Also unplugging power supplies for cell phones or external hard drives will help save power as well. Even if your not using the hard drive or your cell phone isn’t being charged those little boxes that convert the current from ac to dc voltage continually draws power. We plug most items into power strips here and turn them off at the end of the night cutting power to everything. It’s not a huge savings but imagine if everyone did that on a regular basis.
The moral here is that by changing daily habits around the office you’ll help to insure the future will be a little bit brighter for all.
